Net Worth Update: $660,442.69 (+$12,000)

I’m a bit late to the game this month, but as always our latest net worth numbers are posted below. And also like always, 95% of it rides on the whims of the market ;) Which thankfully I believe in, or else it would really feel out of control!

Speaking of which, I really like this quote I saw the other day by fellow blogger, and author, Tom Corley:

“Choice, not chance, determines your fate.”

BOOM!

Do you remember that time when you finally “got it” and realized you needed to start making changes with your $$$? When something just clicked and it was time to put it into overdrive?

That’s where I was almost 10 years ago exactly, and by making that one commitment to finally start saving some *real* money completely changed the game for me. I’ve literally done one main thing every year since (max out my retirement accounts) and the power of compounding has taken it from there.

It’s a surefire way to reach independence – so long as you have the patience for it :)

But in either case, it all comes down to choice, not chance. Much to the dismay of my kids… (“But dad, we didn’t doooo anything? It just fell and broke!” Uh-huh….)

(Was it fate? Or my kids trying to wrestle it out of each other’s arms? Orrrrrr was it by *choice*, just so they can get their hands on the cash faster?? ;))

There’s a lot of things we can’t control in this world, but personal action – and by extension, our finances – is not one of them. We all have the power to make a change, and it starts with one big decision followed by hundreds more little ones.

If your money isn’t trending in the direction you want it to be, it’s time to take that first step!

Now to July’s $$$ numbers…

[We post these updates here on the blog once a month to show a real-life snapshot of what someone’s money looks like and to get good discussions going around it. Tracking this stuff has been one of the best things I’ve ever done with my money, and I hope you are doing the same – even if you never share it with a soul! :) You can find all 115 of our net worth updates over time here.]

CASH SAVINGS(+$58.07): Nothing too exciting going down in this department. Shaved some expenses here (less daycare) and spent others there (beach vacation) and by the end of it we pretty much broke even. Though I must admit – it’s been nice working less over the summer, especially if it’s not affecting the income!

THRIFT SAVINGS PLAN (TSP) (+$503.24): The wife keeps on working, and the automatic transfers keep on hitting! I know the gov’t is all kinds of bonkers right now, but man – their benefits sure are killer for its employees. I hope everyone working there is taking full advantage of it while they can! Never know what’s around the corner w/ those guys…

ROTH IRAs(+$2,418.48): A nice little boost here as well. It’s been a few months since we’ve put anything into it (we max it out once a year after tax time), but I swear one of these days I’m going to go back to the monthly deposits… still just chicken since life keeps fluctuating so much lately.

SEP IRA($8,806.76): Same with this bad boy here too – nothing new added while the market keeps doing its market thing. Awfully fun to watch when you have money invested in it, but won’t be so much as soon as it starts crashing ;) And we all know it will – it’s just a matter of when!

Here’s a screenshot from our Vanguard account since moving over the other year:

CAR VALUES(-$127.00): Nothing too exciting going down in this department – just the cars doing what they naturally do – depreciate. Here’s the values of them per Kelly Blue Book:

Lexus RX350: $12,203.00

Toyota Corolla: $3,955.00

CAR LOAN:(-$466.20): We continue to send a few hundred extra towards it every month! In fact, I’m pretty sure I accidentally paid like 3 months worth of interest ahead or something as it shows my next payment is due in December, haha… But can’t stop me from keeping going ;)

And that’s July’s net worth!

Here’s a quick snapshot of how it’s performed over the past year – with sexy gradient and all:

And of course, we can’t forget about my little nugget’s net worths… They may be only 3 and 5, but everyone has a financial footprint! Whether they know about it or not!

If you're not a spreadsheet guy like me and prefer something more automated (which is fine, whatever gets you to take action!), you can try your hand with a free Personal Capital account instead.

Personal Capital is a cool tool that connects with your bank & investment accounts to give you an automated way to track your net worth. You'll get a crystal clear picture of how your spending and investments affect your financial goals (early retirement?), and it's super easy to use.

Jay loves talking about money, collecting coins, blasting hip-hop, and hanging out with his three beautiful boys. You can check out all of his online projects at jmoney.biz. Thanks for reading the blog!

I’d say that’s a pretty good month if you were able to take some time off and still do so well! My kids are always saying they didn’t mean to break things… I’m pretty sure it’s always the latter reason you mentioned :)
Our moment was about 6 years ago, when I finally accepted that paying 18% interest on a vehicle was really stupid. And then we kicked it into high gear to pay off all our debt and start working towards FI.
Everyone def has their moment that they realize what’s important. For us, having more time together is so much more important that spending tons of money.
Great month!

Nice, well done mate! I cannot get enough of looking at graphs that keep going up, including yours. But before I’m getting ahead of myself here, I’m also very curious (and scared) to see what happens to the portfolio values of the various bloggers (including ours) when the market does tank…..

Haha – yup! And the same goes in the opposite direction too – when you try timing *when to get back in* as well. That’s why i love this passive index investing route – I just put it in during good times or bad and then let the markets do their thing! No more timing for me anymore either.

I actually had a dream last night that I was shopping for used cars in the $2,000 market haha… That probably means that I miss my old Cadillac (which I do!), but not enough for me to sell and go back :)

Looks like a solid month!
When we had a car loan I fought the bank every time I paid extra because they liked to default it to the next month’s payment instead of onto the principle! I guess they make more money that way but it was really frustrating to deal with that all the time.

I’m pretty happy because I was able to convince another guy at work to start tracking his net worth!

I’ll probably pay it off at the end of the year when our 2nd installment hits from the portion of the blog I sold last year when teaming up with my tech friends. Still very much in no rush to liquidate our current savings – it keeps us at peace, especially with me in this recent stint of not wanting to work as much anymore :)

Thank you for publicly posting your net worth. Your blog is the first place I’ve seen this and it is how I learned to track my own. I started tracking my family’s net worth 17 months ago and we were on the wrong side of zero. Like in the negative 50k. We’ve been working hard to hit zero and August first 2017 is when it finally happened! I was expecting to get there this fall so it was a huge surprise to see it this early. I am a teacher so I don’t get paid in the summer so we save to cover expenses and go into a holding pattern for 9 weeks. I was blown away to see a positive of over 5k. This is just what I needed to make the final push for the next few weeks of no paychecks for me and a dwindling summer savings account.

I’m sure you addressed this in a previous post but is there a reason you aren’t doing $18K/year into the TSP? I feel like daycare was the answer but I thought I would ask since I can remember specifically.

Excluding the $112k I have in 529 plans I keep flirting with the $300k line (depending on the day…). I just picked up an employee so I should be able to max my wife out this year too. it will be all before tax time though… still better than nothing at all. My goal was to hit $200,000 in just vanguard before the EOY, but I would need some serious help to hit that. Looks like Ill be about $10k shy, I will however finally have a 6 figure 401k, which is awesome for me having just got to the point I can dump significant money into retirement about 3 years ago. Self employed up to 54K a year contributions FTW!

We don’t max out my wife’s TSP simply because we need the money :) Moving up to this place blew our expenses out the door – especially with childcare – so most of it is just going directly to our budget every month. Things will get better once our oldest heads off to school this Fall, along with my wife getting a raise here shortly now that it’s been a year (woo!), but until we move out of here we’re stuck w/ a bulk of the high costs. Which I know you know of all too well too :)

Your SEP IRA is pretty awesome. Nice job with that.
Yeah, why not max out your TSP. :) Just keep increasing it every year and I’m sure you’ll max it out very soon. The TSP is really an awesome way to invest. So easy and very low fees. Once the kids go to school it should be much easier, unless you send them to an expensive private school… Keep at it.

With fancy gradient?? Be still my beating heart. It’s so fancy! Oh yeah, I guess I like the numbers it represents too. I just hit $100k in my 401k and I am PUMPED! I hope to hit $200k by the end of the year total, but we’ll see if that’s going to happen. (Ridiculous house is ridiculous.)

Thanks for sharing the Excel templates. I keep going back and forth between manual tracking and using Mint or Personal Capital. At heart, I’m sort of a financial nerd, so I like to create my own charts and tracking tools in Excel, but the automation and insights from Personal Capital are appealing.

Just curious – why the car payments? Maybe you explained this in a previous post, but couldn’t you just write a check and be debt free? I have a car payment, too, so I’m not throwing stones here!

Try out Tiller – they may be the perfect concoction for you as they merge automation WITH spreadsheets!

Car payment – I like hoarding cash cuz my online income fluctuates a lot. I’m also trying to work less over time which probably means earning less too (though I’m trying to find that magical sweet spot!) so for now the peace of savings trumps everything :)

Up 16.3K to 763K. Nice new high – broke 3/4 mil. Sort of waiting for the inevitable correction.

J, are you sure that the financing company isn’t just counting your additional amounts toward future payments? I.E. if they are saying you don’t have to pay until Dec, they may not be applying the extra dough towards principal (thus lowering the interest you will pay).
If they apply the extra payments towards principal they would still be expecting a payment every month. I’m thinking you aren’t actually saving interest if they choose to count the extra funds against future payments. Essentially, you would be giving them an interest free loan.

I kind of miss doing our net worth updates. I personally got a lot out of the accountability aspect, but too many people in real life know about the blog now and I can’t bring myself to throw the figures out.

Baby Penny and Baby Nickel are killing it- like those names by the way! And you are too! I agree that this month was a good month for the markets, it’s always nice when the net worth numbers are in the positive :)

I hit $100K net worth in Dec. of last year, and I just finally hit $100K just in the 403(b) alone this month! Hoping to make $150K total net worth by the end of the year, but as with you, a lot of that is at the mercy of Mr. Market.

Congrats and great update! It certainly helps that the markets have been very kind to us all this year. But being smart like moving money into low-cost Vanguard accounts will ensure you make the most of the market! Great to see your progress I think I’ll start a net-worth post soon. Did I see that correctly, no home/mortgage… you’ve got to be a good post on that topic yeah?

Everything seems to be on the up and up, speck-tack-alur (thanks T.Hanks). I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the markets to drop, dip, crash, or falter. Well, like you, I am contributing to things like TSP and IRAs, but I am also not dumping a ton of cash into the pool. Waiting for that inevitable correction… Just curious, how much of an emergency fund you keep on hand?

Yup – the same! The markets are starting to freak me out, haha… I want it to cool down for a while :)

Emergency Fund – most of that cash up there acts as an e-fund for us. It’s fluctuated from $5,000 to $90,000 over the years depending on what’s going on in our lives and what my online businesses are doing. (As well as what makes my wife happy – who’s much more conservative than I am :))

I really love the quote too “Choice, not chance, determines your fate.” I really don’t have much sympathy for people buying a $10 cocktails while whining about how they make minimum wages. Or not taking actions to change for the better.

Congrats J. Money on crushing it this month. I just started my own blog to track my net worth, and it’s always great to see the numbers go up (or down if it’s debt). Looking forward to the next bear market to snag some more investments hopefully not at these crazy valuations. But at least for now, happy to be seeing green everywhere!

“Your money comes and goes by *choice,* not by chance!”. I wouldn’t be able to find another simpler phrase to describe my philosophy when it come to managing my money. I wouldn’t leave my financial future to chances and I would never count on the security of government members money to sustain my livelihood when I am retired. Hence I choose to buildup own path and depend on my own wealth rather than the keys kindness of government programs.

Nice month for you! Especially with more downtime and vacation with your family! My July ended well, but I have some big dental expenses coming and I know that I will just have to keep on plugging away.

Another positive month from the market, haha. Great job to reduce expense to allocate more towards experiences, though, has been the big takeaway from your post this go around. Talk soon JM, and keep the cash flow coming in to continue to build those assets up. Let the cycle do it’s thing.

I think I probably say this every time, but that rate of return is awesome! 9.6%!

What is your allocation J.Money? Are you 100% stocks? We’ve got 70% of our portfolio in mix of domestic and international stocks plus 30% in bonds/bank deposits. Early in my investing “career” I had a big loss that made me realize my risk tolerance isn’t as high as I thought. As a result my wife and I are somewhat conservative with our portfolio. Less return but less worry too.

Smart to change it up like that when you figure it out! I’m 100% in stocks right now like the old you :) 100% in VTSAX specifically, with Vanguard. I may branch out to international and bonds later to have the 3-fund portfolio going as it’s probably smarter, but for now just trying to reap it all in before I get conservative in my old age… Check in again though after this upcoming crash ;)

I’m confused. I see your networth listed as both $1.8M and $660k. I’m sure house is part, but where can I read where you post the difference in what is tracked here vs your total? I hope I’m not missing it above.

Second question…as I contemplate FIRE, do you or have you read of a strategy beyond an emergency fund of cash? Example: Stock market for us crashes, and your VTSAX is at 50% value for 60 months. Do you have tiers of investments that are more conservative to replenish your emergency fund when it is depleted during that 5 year drought?

You’re probably getting my numbers confused with Mr 1500’s numbers who writes for us on Wednesdays :) He’s got $1.8 million net worth and is retired early, while I’m at the $660k and still working on attaining that beautiful freedom.

Tiers of investments — I do not personally have anything like that set up as my plan is to just keep throwing more money into it when they’re all 50% off in that example, but again I’m not retired and needing to live off it yet. I’d check out some of the FIRE bloggers already there or working on it as they tend to focus much more on this stuff than the daily $$$ life that I do :)

Here’s a handful of them from our Directory, followed by our “best list” which also features some FIRE bloggers:

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I, J. Money, only claim the thoughts from my head. I am not a banker, CPA, money manager or anything else of that sort. Please seek a professional for any "real" advice. More info: privacy & disclosure page